


Falling Leaves

by kangeiko



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-31
Updated: 2006-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:25:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ex-god and the end of the world. Post-NFA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Leaves

_There are better things than this. There is the sun across the ocean (this she has never seen). There is children's laughter (it is too loud and nasal: it grates on her nerves). There is human joy, and holiday spirits, and red glittery ballgowns (irrelevant, irrelevant)._

_There are better things than this: the room, the bed, the nameless man asleep on his side, his body rank and the air fetid, and indelicate noises rising from his chest with each breath. If she leaves the room, she can find them. _

_Outside, she knows, the leaves fall._

No - start again.

*

i.

She left Los Angeles to FEMA, and the two human bodies to the coroners. The ashes, she scattered to the wind, and thought no more of it. She travelled south, following the curve of the horizon across highways and empty streets, and convenience stores with neon lights and acne-ridden boys with striped aprons and glazed expressions, and cold air, and dying trees. The television blared wherever she went, and everyone from Donald Rumsfeld to Regis and Kathy Lee had something to say on 'it'. Ilyria did not much care what 'it' was, and she tuned out the incessant chatter, taking food and drink as she needed, and not bothering with such human trivialities as payment.

The clerks seemed not to care.

*

ii.

She stopped outside a motel when she tired. It was somewhere on the interstate, but she wasn't much concerned with _where_, exactly, merely that it was not distant enough from the plumes of smoke still billowing over the Sunset Strip. The shell's schooling had involved video footage of some sort of war - she was not certain which - and a mushroom cloud rising over the desert sun.

(It looks different with a Coca-Cola billboard in the foreground.)

She took a room.

The owner did not notice.

(The TV was blaring something loud and tasteless, and there were many humans crowded outside their place of power, waving placards and screaming into the sky.)

*

iii.  
On the fourth day after the apocalypse, Illyria took the owner to her bed and watched disinterestedly as he pawed her, rubbing at her belly and biting her breasts. He was a large man, unkempt, and she tangled her fingers in his chest hair to keep herself balanced atop him. She is attractive to human eyes - she knows this for a fact - and even in this ridiculously flimsy form it is still affirming to be desired.

(His eyes were closed the whole time.)

*

iv.

He turned the TV on while she washed his essence away beneath the spray. Emerging naked, rubbing her hands through her hair, she watched him watch the television, his hands clenching into fists at his knees.

"The whole fucking world is ending," he said. His voice was low and rough, and tired, as if he had been crying. "Can you believe that? The world' ending, and we're never having another Superbowl, or World Series, or anything."

"Yes," she said.

*

v.

There are better things than this. If she leaves this place, she will see them.

She tucks an arm around the man's belly and slides into the bed, her knees drawn up and her hair spread across the pillow.

(Outside, the leaves fall.)

She closes her eyes.

*

fin


End file.
